A tribute to the children and adults who died in the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School honored with a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye. A list we must return to and remember out of love and hope for a safer world.

It’s not merely a sin-sick soul that is in need of profound redemption, writes our columnist, it is also our society and structural institutions that call out for being redeemed and transformed. A clear call to question, connect, and transform ourselves and our institutions.

“Our genome sequence is the genetic blueprint of our biological self but how much does it, or will we let it, define who we are?” A journalist seeks to reconcile questions of mystery with questions of genetics.

In a culture of curated sharing, the intimacy of human touch can be daunting — even for a pastor. An essay on how the practice of laying on of hands is a quiet and necessary rite that ought to become part of our story again.

With the overwhelming angst of privilege, our columnist confesses to her own inclinations to participate in Twitter testimonies of white privilege. But, it's no substitute for the moral imagination required to acknowledge the emotional lives of others.

A black theologian talks with one of America's leading Old Testament scholars about Ferguson and the place of protest and prophecy in our faith, the place for our rage, the need for honest talk, the role of education in protest, and the transformative potential of radicality.

With the beginning of Advent, a theologian challenges Christians and the rest of us to wait and watch, and to walk alongside those whose hopes have been crushed — with poesy from Seamus Heaney speaking to that truth.

With the grand jury's decision not to indict the police officer who killed Michael Brown, a school of children's uncommon silence in New Mexico leads the way to expressing grief and finding a role for our anger.

A powerful commentary from the mother of a black teenage son who says we need to stop talking around the edges of race and address the systemic problem itself: that we see black men as less than human.

For Thanksgiving, Parker Palmer asks us to find new ways to be filled with gratitude and praise. It's in the gratitude for the ground we stand on, the blessing of togetherness, and the kindness of strangers, that we remember our work is loving the world.